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Education and training

Digital skills courses for primary school teachers: classroom tools and pupils' data

In brief

A primary school handles data about minors: class lists, family circumstances, individual care plans, pupils' work and photographs. It all travels between a school digital workspace, apps chosen in a hurry, a USB stick and the teacher's own computer. Skillrung courses for primary school teachers start from those real circuits, and from the question everyone ends up asking: can this tool receive my pupils' work?

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Data about minors, and families who watch what becomes of it

A primary school teacher holds, without ever having sought it, information few professionals handle: allergies and treatments recorded in an individual care plan, adjustments tied to a learning difficulty, separations under way, contact details for a parent that must not reach the other one. None of this is internal paperwork: it concerns the health and the private life of children, and it is specially protected. The courses treat that reality in operational terms — what gets written down in a shared tool and what stays spoken, what is handed on to next year's teacher, what has no reason to outlive the school year.

The free app you found on a Sunday evening

Most of the tools used in class were chosen by nobody but the teacher: an exercise generator, a collaborative wall, a quiz service. They are often excellent teaching tools, and that is exactly what makes the question hard. The problem appears when you create pupil accounts under their real names, upload their work, or the service turns out to host that data outside the European Union. The course gives a four-question decision method, usable before the lesson: what data does the tool actually need, can you do without it, who hosts it, and who has to be consulted in the school or at the regional education authority.

The USB stick, the home computer and the lesson diary

Lesson planning happens in the evening, at home, on a computer the family also uses, with a USB stick that travels back and forth. On that stick sit teaching sequences, the lesson diary, class lists, progress reports, sometimes class photographs. None of it is backed up anywhere else, none of it is encrypted, and the password for the school digital workspace is often the one already used for a personal service. The courses deal with this hybrid workstation without lecturing anyone: device and session encrypted, a password used nowhere else, a backup that survives a failed disk, a yearly clear-out of pupil files.

Artificial intelligence in lesson planning

Adapting a text to three reading levels, producing differentiated exercises, preparing a graded dictation: the uses are immediate and the time saved is real. Two limits shape the rest. The data first: a pupil's first name attached to a difficulty, an extract from a progress report, an element of family circumstances have no place in a freely accessible service. Checking second: a generated text is plausible before it is accurate, and the errors sit in dates, in agreement, and in the level of language assumed to be within a child's reach.

Sources

What the official text says

Every figure or legal statement on this page points to its primary source, with its date. We publish no figure without a verifiable source.

  • For an information society service offered directly to a child, processing based on consent is lawful from the age of 16, a Member State being free to lower that age without going below 13 (Article 8 of the GDPR).

    Source : Règlement (UE) 2016/679 (RGPD), article 8 : Journal officiel de l'Union européenne, 27 avril 2016.

  • Processing of data concerning health is prohibited in principle and is possible only in the cases exhaustively listed (Article 9 of the GDPR).

    Source : Règlement (UE) 2016/679 (RGPD), article 9 : Journal officiel de l'Union européenne, 27 avril 2016.

Frequently asked questions

What primary school teachers ask us

Can I use a free app I found online with my class?

It depends on what the app asks for. A tool that works with no account and no pupil data raises few questions. As soon as you have to create named accounts or upload pupils' work, the school becomes responsible for that processing: the decision is taken with the head teacher and the regional education authority's data protection officer, before the lesson rather than after it.

Am I allowed to publish photographs of my pupils?

Not without permission, and a permission covers one specific use, not every future one. A photograph meant for a closed class blog is not permission to post on a social network. The GDPR course explains how to word a clear request, how to keep it on file, and how to stop the use when a family changes its mind.

Can I plan my lessons on my personal computer?

In practice everybody does. What matters is not leaving pupil data on it unprotected: a personal session with a password, an encrypted disk, a backup somewhere other than the USB stick, and deletion of the lists and reports that have become useless. The course goes through those settings, system by system, on Windows and on macOS.

What should I do with information about a pupil's family circumstances?

Treat it as what it is: sensitive information, passed to whoever needs it for the child, and to nobody else. It has no place in a group message, in a third-party tool, or in a document shared with the whole staff. The course sets out what gets written down, where it is written, and for how long it is kept.

Can AI write my end-of-term reports?

It can suggest wording from elements you supply without identifying the pupil, and it can save you time on presentation. It cannot form the judgement in your place, and it cannot be given the child's name and difficulties. The final text stays yours, and it is read through in full before it is sent to a family.

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